Archive for January 2nd, 2013

“I urge the full Senate to follow the committee’s lead and quickly pass this important legislation.”

-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, commenting on two gun “control” bills that passed out of the Illinois Senate Public Health Committee tonight, setting the stage for a possible floor vote Thursday

Here’s the latest on the gun and “high-capacity” ammunition magazine bans expected to be pushed through by Democrats in the “lame duck” session (January 2-9) of the Illinois General Assembly. From the Associated Press this evening:

Illinois Senate Democrats who want assault-weapon restrictions will split the issue into separate votes on high-capacity ammunition clips and the guns themselves.

You may have been distracted by events related to New Year’s Day and negotiations over the “fiscal cliff” to notice that the United States reached its authorized debt ceiling of $16.394 trillion on New Year’s Eve. Rich Barbieri and Jeanne Sahadi reported on the CNN Money website Monday morning:

It’s official: U.S. debt reached its legal borrowing limit Monday, giving Congress about two months before it must raise the debt ceiling or risk causing the government to default on its bills and financial obligations.

“I can confirm we will reach the statutory debt limit today, Dec. 31,” a Treasury Department official said Monday.

As for increasing the nation’s debt ceiling yet again, U.S. President Barack Obama doesn’t want debate from Congress on the subject. From Reuters this morning:

President Barack Obama vowed on Tuesday to avoid a repeat of last year’s divisive fight with Congress over an extension of the nation’s borrowing authority.

“While I will negotiate over many things, I will not have another debate with this Congress about whether or not they should pay the bills they have already racked up,” Obama said in remarks in the White House.

“I will not have another debate.” Hmm. Back on December 5, Zachary Goldfarb wrote on the Post Politics blog on the Washington Post website:

As part of the fiscal cliff negotiations, Obama has proposed effectively ending the need for Congress to periodically raise the debt limit, which Republicans have rejected.

In 87 percent of Chicago’s 2012 homicides, the deceased died from a gunshot wound, said Melissa Stratton, spokeswoman for the Chicago Police Department.

As 87 percent of last year’s murders were firearm-related, I’m seeing a number of comments popping-up around cyberspace asking something along the lines of “How’s that strict gun ‘control’ working out for you, Chicago?”

One of the local blogs I visit on a regular basis, Crime in Chicago, counts 532 murders in the “Windy City” in 2012- 91 more than in 2011.

From My Other Blog

While tying up loose ends with the latest quarterly update of Offshore Private Vaults, I encountered a number of private vault promotions taking place these days, including: • Custodian Vaults (Sydney, Australia)- “We are excited to announce that we are offering a 30 day FREE TRIAL at ‪#‎CustodianVaults‬ as part of our Chinese New Year […] ...

I remember reading about Cofres Bitcoin in the news last year. On May 14, 2014, Allen Scott reported on the CoinTelegraph website that Team Daniel Bruno: …will be opening the world’s first Bitcoin store in Montevideo, Uruguay. The Cofres (safes) swap point will be the first-of-its-kind Bitcoin and Swiftcoin brick and mortar location where people […] ...

The other week, while researching offshore private vaults that I could add to this blog’s sister site, I came across a secured storage facility in Canada that really caught my attention. Enter CUBE Global Storage Ltd., or CUBE. From their website under “Our Facility”: Our facility in Victoria, British Columbia is purpose-built for the secure […] ...